I've given up on Parallels. I purchased 2 licenses for Version 2. It would not keep up with kernel changes for Ubuntu - even if you stayed with the LTS version (Ubuntu 8.04). Every kernel update would break it, and eventually they stopped breaking it. THis was even though Canonical sold it in their store!!

Then version 4 came out - I bought the upgrade. It worked when I had Ubuntu 9.04, but it stopped working with 9.10, and I've never been able to get it working again since.

When Parallels works, it is a nice product. It's just too unstable and poorly supported. IF they can get enough funds to properly support it, it could be a good product - certainly the price is right.

From what I gather, the Mac version is better, but I do not have a Mac to test that out - just from looking at the forums.

"Every kernel update would break it, and eventually they stopped breaking it. THis was even though Canonical sold it in their store!!

Another example of why Linux' total disregard for stable interfaces is bad for users and vendors "

DKMS. You don't need a stable interface.

The article kept going on and on about how Virtualbox is free - but the open-source edition doesn't have all the bells and whistles, and the proprietary edition is NOT free if you're using it in enterprise. The article was about enterprise.

Vmware Player has come a long way to handle the changes in the kernel and now it is quite pleasant. In earlier versions, you needed to "reinstall" manually the player (basically recompile the virtual devices and plug them into the running kernel).
Now, in the latest version, when you start the player it detects that the kernel changed and recompiles/plugs the devices in the fly. It just takes a few extra seconds than usual and it only happens when a new kernel is installed.

I think vmware nailed it nicely and made the extra effort to give the final user a consistent and polished solution.

I could point out that the Linux kernel was never designed to support out-of-tree modules - let alone proprietary modules.
I could also point out that a large number of proprietary kernel driver developers have learned to live with this by-design limitation, and by designing their modules with distinct kernel-interfacing-layer (as opposed to calling the kernel API from 10,000 different places), managed to reduce the changes required after each new upstream release. *

... But given that fact that your short comment had more-or-less nothing to do with the subject at hand (the problem might have had nothing to do with upstream kernel API changes and everything to do with sloppy package maintainer in the Ubuntu side or problematic driver building script on parallel's side - I have no idea [but neither do you...]), I can only assume that were simply trolling. Oh well...

I'm not sure what happened with //'s and the PC version, but it always seemed to be great on the Mac. I have Ubuntu 9.10 running like a bought one on //'s 5 now, right down to wobbly window effects and all. I think Linux always seemed to be a second class citizen in the VM world their for a while. I guess it makes sense, you want to get Windows working first I guess...

I am glad to hear they have updated the Windows version, might be worth checking out.

Well, time to chew on my shoe a bit - I went out and downloaded the latest update to Parallels and it started up fine on Ubuntu 9.10. Whatever was wrong seems to have been fixed. I'll run it for a while and see how it goes.